Consolidate or renew the lease?
A lease event forces a number whether or not you have one
The date is fixed years in advance and the decision is not. Without measured evidence at the notice date, renewing by default is the easy outcome, and a five- or ten-year commitment ends up made to avoid a few months of analysis.
The evidence to have by the notice date
Measured use, not headcount
The board's first question is how you know. A utilisation study with a named method answers it; a headcount multiplied by a ratio does not.
The peak under the policy you intend to keep
Consolidating to average demand risks a space problem on the busiest day, which is the day the decision gets remembered.
The cost of the building you keep
Consolidation often means reconfiguring the remaining space. A case that counts the rent saved but not the fit-out spent will struggle at its second review.
What you lose, stated plainly
Every consolidation costs something: a location, a commute, a team adjacency. Naming it in the paper is what makes the rest of the paper credible.
Start earlier than feels necessary
Starting at six months leaves little room, and a short extension then becomes the likely fallback.
A representative measurement needs several weeks across a normal range of days, plus analysis and the space programme that follows. As a planning rule of thumb rather than a standard, that means starting nine to twelve months before the notice date; one building with an observation study can be quicker, a portfolio slower.
Get the lease-decision timeline
The countdown from twelve months out to the notice date, one line per step with a column for who owns it, plus the four things the case has to contain. Dated, so you can work backwards from your own notice date.
PDF, in English.
Questions we get asked
How long does it take?
Getting the platform live is quick: onboarding usually takes one to five days. A study takes longer, and how long depends on the buildings, the method and how many people take part, so we do not publish an average. Scoping takes weeks rather than months, an occupancy round runs over a measurement period agreed up front, and Dynamics closes when the response window closes.
We commit to dates per project in the proposal, and would rather be held to those than to an average.
How does an engagement start?
With the decision you are trying to make, not with a product. We work back from that to what has to be measured, who has to agree, which data already exists and what scope is realistic.
What comes out is a recommendation, and sometimes it is smaller than the enquiry.
What do we need to have ready?
Usually: who owns the decision, the question in one sentence, the buildings or teams in scope, floor plans or a space inventory, whatever workplace data already exists, a plan for telling employees what is happening, and agreement on who is responsible for what under the GDPR.
We confirm the list for each project before anything starts.
What answers this
- Occupancy
Analyze: the measured baseline.
- Taxonomy
The cost of the building you keep.
- Proving the business case
Getting it through the capital process.
- Stay or move: the sizing case
13,500 m² assumed, 10,000 m² calculated; staying avoids 2,000 m² extra, $1.2M a year at an assumed $600 per m².